Wednesday 29 March 2017

reactions

As part of an on-going project that began in 2014 and has evolved parallel to the facial recognition software the artist is exploring, Jillian Mayer has exactingly plotted all the algorithmically significant points on her face to illustrate how she not only can find herself tagged in online images, identified by closed-circuit televisions and objectified as a model herself but moreover how her (our) expressions betray her feelings insofar as they are measurable.
If machines can read our moods and interests so well (or poorly, but it is another thing to convince a much vaunted establishment that its assessments are not on target), the performance-piece asks, why would we expect to asked how we felt? Taking the time seems superfluous and cursory. As large scale credentialing becomes institutionalised and targeted, are we still in control of our physical avatars or solely at the mercy of the interpreter and auger?